The beer podium for 2022 is clear in Europe. Germany, gold medal (by a landslide); Spain, silver, and Poland, third drawer at the cost of bronze. At least in terms of beer production, where the 41.1 million hectoliters are worth us for a second place confirmed by the annual results of the Spanish Brewers Association.
As a combustion engine, the tourism recovery it mobilizes a key industry for our country, where it is estimated that around 400,000 jobs are linked to beer, especially indirectly through the hospitality industry.
In this way, Spain is once again second in the ranking when it comes to employment generated by beer, only behind the eternal Germany, which also acts here as locomotive of a key sector for the European industry.
Among these keys, return to logical figures in terms of tourists, approaching the 105 million visitors in 2022 it also serves to explain the brewing upturn. Even more so when compared to the pyrrhic 51.6 million tourists who arrived in Spain in 2021, still lashing out due to the pandemic.
A consumption that has not recovered
Spain continues to sell beer. In fact, quite a bit. Both its internal market and the external market, where 4.2 million hectoliters are exported. However, it is a figure that is far from the 37.85 million hectoliters that were sold internally in 2019, the pre-pandemic year.
What has not yet risen is consumption in the hospitality industry, which has not yet reached the data for 2019, being consumed in bars, restaurants and cafeterias 4.1% less in 2022. In addition, Spain has changed its way of drinking beer for temporary reasons.
In 2022 we drank 60% of the beer in the hotel industry, compared to to the 70% that it supposed before the pandemicalthough far from the 50% consumption in bars that 2021 represented, marked again by Covid19.
Consumed, they say from Cerveceros de España, “in a social and moderate behavior“, where 94% of those who drink it say they are accompanied by friends, family, partner or co-workers. Despite the fact that beer, like other items on the shopping list, has also risen in this inflationary period.
THE COMIC STORY OF BEER (MAIN GRAPHIC)
Blonde beer, the most consumed in Spain, has 14.1% more expensive since February 2022, while so far in 2023 it has risen in price by 3.8%. Even so, in 2023 it is far from the price increase of the rest of the beers, which marked an increase of 7.9% in the third month of the year.
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